


Erratic Orbit

by blcwriter



Category: The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: Competency, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Mindy Park is genre savvy, Snark, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 02:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5073616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark Watney meets his space stalker.  It's weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Erratic Orbit

“So… you’re my space stalker, hmm?” Mark Watney gave her an unsexual once-over, his expression weirdly blank. She was the still-too-rare woman at NASA, so she knew from sexualized stares-- she had no idea what to call the expression that came with Watney’s introduction. Kapoor, either, since he just raised his eyebrows. 

“I’d thought you’d be more…” Watney paused, “well, Korean.” His telegenic, media-relations manager smile bloomed then, almost as bright as those annoying pre-mission PR films, his expression pure “oh, hah-hah, I’m probably the first person to make that joke.” Of course, he actually was. Not that she’d say so. He didn’t know (or maybe he did?) that most of her male coworkers’ version of humor consisted of Monty Python misquotes and gamer boy shit-talk. 

Still, though-- of course it was Watney who’d name what she’d been (and still was) pissed about, everything else notwithstanding. At least Kapoor was there to hear as Watney commented, “that’s gotta suck, most of the way to two Ph.D.s and they stick you watching the one dude dumb enough to get stranded on a hostile, dead planet. Ugh.” Then he paused, apparently thought better of something and waved from his step or two inside the room, ignoring her outstretched hand. “Hi. I’m Mark Watney.”

As if she hadn’t already known who he was, given the 24-hour-news cycle of debarkation photos and “look, I’m still alive!” Hermes livestreams on the way back to Earth, not to mention the fact that she could recognize his stance from a half-mile orbit. Still, though, that imagery had been needed to tide the world over through crew’s re-entry quarrantine. Not that Watney’s stupid half-jackass, half-clever, half-self-deprecating (yes, she could count) sense of humor wouldn’t have given him away, if anyone was thrown by the Real, Live, Recovering Starvation Victim Mark Watney, complete with live-action grey hair.

Thank goodness he’d shaved that godawful beard.

She wouldn’t fangirl. She didn’t need to. She wasn’t going to. Although the Korean crack was funny, or something close. “My parents thought it would be hilarious to adopt a white kid. They’re the Korean version of Brangelina,” she deadpanned. “My brothers and sisters are Black and Hispanic, because that’s what ministers do, build a team of multicultural baby missionaries.”

Watney snorted, before doing a double-take. “Really?” 

She nodded, all seriousness, though she didn’t really care if he believed her or not. “Parent-Teacher night was always interesting.” 

“And of course, you didn’t want to win the science fair, you wanted to dance.” His eyes sparkled as he whined out the last part of the joke, his Chicago twang more pronounced than usual. 

Instead of laughing, she offered, “I think if my parents knew I’d be the world’s most overqualified peeping Tom, they’d have thought twice about telling me I danced like a drunk stork. Plus, my student loans would be paid off by now.”

Kapoor snorted at the student loan crack, his first verbalization since he’d ushered Watney in to her new office and stated the obvious with his introduction. Now, he chuckled out the pronouncement that “Everyone’s a comedian, Mark, your horrible sense of humor has corrupted NASA.” Mindy swallowed the urge to punch him; she'd always had her own snark, thank you. Adminstrators, ugh. They never could separate sarcasm from seriousness.

Watney shook his head quickly and sidled away a bit when Kapoor went to clap him on the shoulder, just as he’d stood his ground when Mindy’d stood and offered her hand to shake. Still, he recovered quickly, leaning away from Kapoor as he inclined toward toward Mindy’s desk. Venkat wandered out of the room, satisfied he’d done whatever it was he thought was necessary in bringing Watney around. 

Mindy re-took her chair, as Watney took in the room, then eyed her computer displays. She scooted to the side a bit as he approached, so he could look on without breathing down her actual neck. She wasn’t sure why Watney was really here, in her particular office.

“So what’s on the Mindy Park show now that the budget’s been blown for at least a decade and the world has to find some other poor bastard to ogle?” Watney’s tone was not happy, and well, she wouldn’t trade places with him, maybe even especially now. She couldn’t have done what he did, and not just because she had a black thumb and her mechanical engineering work was exclusive to orbital stuff. Some people were made to be heroes; she knew she was not.

Still, he’d asked about her actual work. She flipped to the results she’d been emailed this morning, displaying the sat images and resultant orbital recalcs from Purnell on her screens. One real perk of all this, and she’d admit Kapoor and Teddy had been good at their word; the wall-mounted display and the multiple screens made reviewing flight path adjustments easier, and now she had a bevy of interns to do all the overnight shit. 

It was weird to be working days, not to mention less than 18 hours a day. 

“Europa,” she answered, pointing to the main findings projected on the wall and on her main screen. “There’s been some seismic activity and…” 

“Water, water, everywhere,” Watney snorted, squinting at the fissures her imaging showed, his eyes flicking over the math regarding sat imaging adjustments. “The underground ocean’s not so...”

“Underground anymore,” she agreed. Not bad, for a botanist, to pick up something so subtle as the small signs of active ice geysers, although he could’ve read the mid-day briefing. She said so, aloud.

Watney half-smiled. “I’m only half the idiot they give me credit for being.” He straightened, backing away, not that he’d ever gotten too close. His hands were tucked tightly back in his pockets.

Yeah. He was twitchy as bug-fuck, as her biological gram might have said. Not that she blamed him.

“You know,” she offered, as she adjusted her monitors to redisplay the Voyager recalculations he’d interrupted. “I wasn’t looking for you.” She’d been looking for his dead body, but then, he probably knew that more than anyone else. Well, except for Mitch Henderson, but they couldn’t all be asshole optimists, could they? The last year-plus now seemed like-- well, some crazy Hollywood movie, and she was sure that someday, it would be.

Watney was mostly out the door by then, trying to be unobtrusive. He wasn’t succeeding. Still, he nodded as a response to her comment, eyes barely glancing back over hers before he stepped out into the hall. Then, though, he paused, framed by the doorway. “Well, you found me anyway.” 

“I’m just that awesome.” It sounded a bit more like a question than she would have liked. “Come back, um, whenever.” To recover from that bit of not-glib, she gave him the “I’m watching you,” sign; his eye contact was still pretty twitchy, but he returned the gesture before disappearing from view. 

“He thought I’d be more Korean.” She shook her head, once, then set back to work.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted some kind of fix-it for Mindy Park not being Korean in the movie, while still acknowledging that MacKenzie Davis did a great job. This doesn't do the issue justice, but it's something, at least.
> 
> In my head, Mark & Mindy become friends, but I don't ship them. 
> 
> I am considering a series of Mark Watney & other "side characters" as character development, post-book & post-movie. This is the only one that's made its way out of notes yet. My other headcanon is that Mark Watney isn't the only person having trouble adjusting after all's said and done.
> 
> (First fic in almost 2 years; comments are more than welcome.)


End file.
